Among other life manifestations of certain bacteria may be mentioned those which have the property of generating colouring matter, though not chlorophyll. The bacteria themselves are colourless and transparent, and the pigment is merely formed as a product of their metabolism, especially under the influence of light. Many of the bacteria give rise to various gases and odours, particularly the anærobic organisms, which originate those foul putrefactive gases (ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen, &c.). The blood-rain, Micrococcus prodigiosus, gives off an odour resembling trimethylamin. Micro-organisms have the property of producing various changes in the medium on which they are grown. In many cases albuminous bodies are peptonized and gelatine is liquefied. Many bacteria have the faculty of resolving organic bodies into their simplest elements; others, again, have the property of converting ammonia into nitric and nitrous acid. Certain microbes have the property of becoming phosphorescent in the dark. These phosphorescent bacteria are often seen on decaying plants and wood; sometimes in tropical climates the sea becomes luminous owing to the presence of countless numbers of these organisms. Again, they are frequently seen on the surface of dead fish, particularly mackerel, which often become so bright as to strongly illuminate the cupboard in which they lie.
The particular class of fungi that produce disease in man and the higher animals are generally known as “pathogenic.” These pathogenic organisms may exert their pernicious power in several ways. They may be injurious on account of their abstracting nourishment from the blood or tissues, or for the purely mechanical reason of their stopping up the minute capillaries and blood-vessels by their excessive multiplication. But the poisonous action of most of the pathogenic bacteria is due to the chemical products secreted by the organisms, and it is to the circulation and absorption within the body of these poisons that the disturbances of the animal system, which characterise disease, decay, and dissolution of every organism, must be traced.
Parasitic Diseases of Plants.
The subject of fungoid diseases and fungus epidemics are of worldwide interest, if only because of the annual losses to agriculturists from parasitic diseases of plants, amounting to millions of pounds sterling. The history of wheat-rust, and that of oats and rye, each equally susceptible to the ravages of the same Rufus, can be traced back to Genesis. A description of it was given in 1805 by Sir Joseph Banks. He suggested that the germs entered the stomata, and he warned farmers against the use of rusted litter, and made important experiments on the sowing of rusted wheat-grains. A great discussion on the barberry question followed, Fries particularly insisting on the difference between Æcidium berberidis and Puccinia graminis. Tulasne confirmed the statement made by Henslow that the uredo and puccinia stages belong to the same fungus, and are not mixed species. De Bary’s investigations in 1860-64 proved that the sporidia of some Uredinieæ (e.g., Coleosporium) will not infect the plant which bears the spores, and that the æcidia of certain other forms are stages in the life-history of species of Uromyces and Puccinia. Furthermore, De Bary in 1864 attacked the question of wheat rust, and by means of numerous sowings of the telentospores on barberry proved that they bring about the infection.
This led to the discovery of the phenomenon of Heterœcism (colonisation), introducing a new idea, and clearing up many difficulties. In 1890 the rust question entered on a new phase: it was taken up by men of science all over the world, and active inquiries were set on foot. The result has been the confirmation of De Bary’s results, but with the further discovery that our four common cereals are attacked by no less than ten different forms of rust belonging to five separate species or “form species,” and with several physiological varieties, capable of turning the table upon the barberry by infecting it. Some of these are found to be strictly confined to one or other of the four common cereals, infecting two or more of them, while others can infect various kinds of our common wild grasses.
Fig. 272.—Puccinia, displaying uredospores and telentospores.
a. Aregma speciosum; b. Xenodochus paradoxus; c. P. Amorphæ; d. Triphœmium dubens; e. Younger spores; f. P. lateripes; magnified 450 diameters.
The fact is, that what has usually gone by the name of Puccinia graminis is an aggregate of several species, and that varietal forms of this exist so especially adapted to the host, that, although no morphical differences can be detected between them, they cannot be transferred from one cereal to another, pointing to physiological variations of a kind met with among bacteria and yeasts, but hitherto unsuspected in these higher parasitic fungi. It now appears we must be prepared for similar specialisation of varietal forms among Ustilagineæ as well as among Uredineæ.
Moreover, it has been found that different sorts of wheat, oats, barley, and rye are susceptible to their particular rusts in different degrees, at the bottom of which, it is suggested, there must be some complex physiological causes. De Bary gave proof, in 1886, that Peziza ([Plate I]., Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6) succeeds in becoming parasitic only after saprophytic culture to a strong mycelium, and that its form is altered thereby—probably by the excretion of a poison. Professor Marshall Ward showed that similar results took place in the case of the lily disease. Reinhardt, in 1892, showed that the apical growth of a peziza is disturbed and interrupted if the culture solution is employed concentrated; and Büsgen, in 1893, showed that Botrytis cinerea excretes poison at the tips of the hyphæ, thus confirming Professor Ward’s results with the lily disease in 1888, and of later years, that a similar excretion occurs in rust-fungus. He further found that the water contents of the infected plant exercises an influence, as in the case of Botrytis attacking chrysanthemums and other plants in the autumn, and that cold increases the germinating capacity of the spores.